


Not Quite As Planned

by AvengersCompound (emilyevanston)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Clumsy Clint Barton, Cooking, Embarrassment, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Minor Injuries, Star Spangled Bingo, WinterHawk Bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21952828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyevanston/pseuds/AvengersCompound
Summary: Clint wants his first Christmas with Bucky to be perfect.  Things do not quite go as planned.Square filled:@star-spangled-bingo - This is not what it looks like, @winterhawkbingo - I3, Clumsy except in the field
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44
Collections: Star Spangled Bingo 2019, Winterhawk Bingo





	Not Quite As Planned

Clint really liked Christmas. Yes, it always came along with a little bit of melancholy. For Clint, most holidays did. It was hard to shake when you grew up the way he had. Still, it was a holiday he liked. He liked putting up the tree, even if it took him over an hour to untangle his Christmas lights. He liked buying gifts for his friends. Even when he couldn’t afford very much, he liked putting the thought into things they might like. He liked buying sugar cookies and pumpkin pie and getting gingerbread spiced coffee when he went to Starbucks. He liked hearing the Christmas songs endlessly. And he liked how the stores all got a little more magical.

It was rare he got to have a Christmas meal though. He and Bobbi used to do them and occasionally he’d be invited to something by Tony, though those were usually big Yule Balls rather than a Christmas meal. Natasha would have dinner with him sometimes, but neither were exactly great at Christmas dinner preparation and both disagreed with what was supposed to be included. Usually, he ate cold ham with mashed potatoes alone, and really he was fine with that too. Because he’d eat it watching it’s a Wonderful Life and wearing some stupid Christmas sweater knowing there were kids up the hall riding their new bikes or playing their new games.

This year though… Clint was really, really excited about Christmas. This was his first one with Bucky and he wanted to make it special. Because even with Clint’s abusive dad and being bounced around foster homes and running away to the circus, compared to Bucky Barnes, he had had it good. He wanted to give his boyfriend a Christmas that would show him exactly how Clint felt about him.

It was a pity he was such a disaster.

He should have known things weren’t going to go how he wanted when he’d ended up cutting through the Christmas lights while they were plugged in and he’d zapped himself.

He’d brushed it off as just one of those things. He could fall into a dumpster three times in one day and then not again for months and months. His accidents were never portents of what was to come.

To make up for the lack of Christmas lights, he lit some candles around the room hoping that would make the room have that festive magical feel. It did make it smell like a mixture of pine, sugar cookie, and linen, but that wasn’t so bad.

When he had gone to get the turkey started and it was still frozen in the middle. He still had the ham though, and he thought maybe if he put the turkey on the windowsill it might thaw through enough to have for dinner instead of lunch. They could just have a rolling feast that lasted all day really.

He preheated the oven and glazed the ham with no problem, but when he was peeling the root vegetables he managed to peel his thumb instead of the potato he was working on. As he cursed and bled over everything he opened every single cabinet trying to find something to stem the bleeding. As he reached for the one above him, he knocked one of the candles over and it set the ham’s glaze on fire, which in turn caught the cheap synthetic Christmas sweater he was wearing ablaze.

He grabbed the ham and ran for the window, leaving a trail of blood on his carpet. He tripped over the tangled light cables just before he reached the window and went straight through it. The ham went flying, landing in a pile of snow on the other side of the street, the turkey flew up into the air and landed on his head as he lay sprawled and bleeding on the fire escape and his tree somehow got dragged through the window after him, and fell, stopping only when the string of lights ran out and ended up hanging mid-air, attached to his ankle.

He groaned and clutched his thumb as there was a knock on the door.

“Clint?”

Bucky’s voice traveled through his apartment, confused and slightly panicked.

“Out here…” Clint groaned, trying to get up.

The dark features of the man he was falling in love with appeared in the broken remnants of his window. “What the hell?” He asked.

“This is not what it looks like,” Clint whined.

“I don’t even know what it looks like,” Bucky said, climbing onto the fire escape. “How come you can do a perfect somersault of a building while firing arrows at moving targets and land in a crouched roll on top of a traveling car and hit every target but you can’t make dinner without nearly killing yourself and setting your building on fire?”

Clint let Bucky help him up and untangle the tree from his leg. “I don’t know.”

Bucky shrugged. “I guess I can’t judge. Come on. Let’s get you to the emergency room.”

Which was how Clint ended up having his first Christmas with his new boyfriend in the ER. It could be worse. At least they served turkey and everyone already knew his name. Besides, Buck was there taking care of him. Maybe he didn’t show Bucky how much he loved him, but he certainly felt it from Bucky today, and that was the best gift he could get.


End file.
